Other new users include Dell, Riverbed Technology, the State Bar of Nevada, Enel NA, YMCA, BlueCross Blue Shield, Porter Novelli, Sallie Mae, Juniper Networks & the City of Edmonton.

“HyperOffice helps us increase productivity by streamlining scheduling of meetings & enabling us to avoid conflicts,” said Pete Martinez, training specialist at Winn-Dixie.

“This trend with larger companies tracks with research,” said Farzin Arsanjani, president of HyperOffice.

For example, of approximately $64 billion spent on business & collaboration applications in 2008, research firm Gartner estimates that 10%, or $6.4 billion, was spent on hosted web-applications.

Research firm IDC expects subscription software spending to grow at a compounded 18% a year, to $19.8 billion, by 2012. IDC expects that the recession would prompt more users to choose software-as-a-service over on-premises applications. It also forecast that nearly 45% of U.S. companies will spend about one-fourth of their IT budgets on SaaS by 2010 – & projects that hosted software can bring cost savings of 25-60% if maintenance & IT staff are factored in.

Analyst Amy Wohl, who has tracked “Cloud-based software” since the 1990s writes, (http://amys.typepad.com/amy_wohls_opinions_on_saa/2008/10/serving-the-smb.html)“the recession is a veiled blessing for the SaaS market, offering budget-pressured companies a way to obtain software without having to pay for implementation & skilled employees. The economies of SaaS will be very appealing in these tight times. Count on more SaaS.”